h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I don't really have anything to say, but noone's posted anything here for 3 weeks, so I thought I'd say hi.

Thank you so much for stopping by, you are correct, it is a very lonely place here. I am working on submitting an entry on Spanish verbs, so maybe that will liven things up. Have a great day!

An entry on Spanish verbs? I'm sure that will be quite useful, I think one of the very best things the guide can do is spread knowledge about different languages and the way they're used... but then, I'm a linguist, so of course I think that... So, other than lonely, how has your experience of h2g2 been so far?

Well, it's only been lonely because I haven't been doing what I should be doing. Or so I have been told. My experience has been really good, all the of the entries I have read have been extremely thoughtful and humorous. So you're a linguist? I am really interested in linguistics, I want to study something in that field for my Senior Project at my high school. What areas are your specialty? Any suggestions? Thanks so much.

There's something you *should* be doing around h2g2?? What?? *panics* Actually, I'm studying linguistics, to be precise... I'm mainly interested in the history and development of English, and also non-Indo European languages of Europe... one of the more major areas at the moment is more in the area of socio-linguistics, studying the way people use languages and their attitudes towards it...more field-work than research, and probably the sort of area most suited to a project of that kind...

That is really interesting! Do you have any project ideas I could try? Are you fluent in a language other than English? What are your career goals in relation to your linguistics studies? Thanks for taking the time to enlighten me!

Hmm...let's see, you live in Washington? If you're interested in actually talking to people, you could design a study to find out their attitudes towards the language they use... in the US, as opposed to Australia or the UK, there isn't really much of a 'prestige' accent, as RP in the UK is...but, having spoken to a few people, it would seem that the NYC accent is generally regarded reasonably higly - but not by New Yorkers themselves. This is just off the top of my head, and NYC is a little way away from you anyway, there may be some interesting features you've noticed in more local speech, I don't know. We had a girl here from Canada talking about the features of Canadian English and the way in which it is being eroded by, but still resisting, General American...so that might be more of a research topic for you...I'm not fluent in any language other than English, though I know a bit of Finnish (and am still learning) as well as a very little bit of Old English (and am still learning ) Career goals...I'll have to wait and see what post-graduate opportunities are available to me before I decide that - I didn't even know I was interested in Linguistics until I got into uni, who knows where I'll want to take it in 2 years time... What sort of thing are you looking at doing?

PS: The movie you're thinking of is Strictly Ballroom, which is an Australian film starring Paul Mecurio. As far as I can remember it was set in a Greek community in Australia, but it's been a little while since I last watched it

Thank you so much for giving me the movie title! I am going to try to rent it tonight. Let's see, the senior project is made up of a 12-15 page research paper, a project or hands on experience relating to your research, and community service. Then you have to do an oral presentation. In Washington, we have no accent known to our region. In fact, my speech teacher told the class that many actors and actresses come up here to get rid of their accents and train to speak like we do. Kind of interesting, isn't it? We don't have many minority groups, I think the most predominant at R.A.Long HS is Asian and Hispanic, but most Asian students do not have accents. Any ideas? It doesn't have to totally relate to our region, it could relate to English or Spanish in general. Thanks so much!

Without really knowing what you've covered in your course, it's hard to really recommend something...if you don't mind interviewing people, language attitudes is a good one...linguistics has moved completely away from a 'proscriptive' position to more of a straight descriptive one...but people often have very strong views on accents...if you have alot of people coming to Washington to lose accents for acting, perhaps you could interview them to ascertain their attitudes to whatever accents they have...just a thought...

I will look into that. I'm not at all familiar with the terms you used but I know if I actually did some research I could find out. I have enough of a topic for a research paper, but I'm still unsure how to form it into an actual hands on project. Thank you so much for your ideas, I'll be sure to credit you in my paper!

What I meant was that, rather than having a stance of saying "You can't talk/write like that, the correct way is to do it like *this*", linguistics is now about "Oh so you talk like *that*? Really? How interesting"...in other words, not judging people by how they talk and trying to make them conform to some mythical 'ideal', rather trying to understand exactly how it is that people actually use language... If you need any more help, be it with the actual forming of your project, or just for some obscure little (accurate) terms to put into your paper and surprise your teacher, feel free to ask...